All Forum Posts by: Tom C.

I am not suggesting that anyone act in a non-fiduciary way.   I am merely saying that "highest and best" indicates the nature of the sales process, so the Agent needs to educate a seller that asking for the highest and best offers typically should mean that the seller intends to follow that processes.   

I just think rather than educating the sellers, the agent allows themselves to look like schmucks to the buyers.   

Anyone else think that any listing agent who says they need all bidders “highest and best” and then after receiving the bids they counter  substantially all those bids to drive “higher-er and best-er” should be imprisoned. 

 /s

Seriously, shouldn’t a seller (or the Agent rep) who requests the highest and best (due to multiple bidders) have some conviction to actually accept the offers as being the highest and best (or walk away)?

When I bid in situations like that I make the offer subject to a short timeframe upon which I deem it reasonable to evaluate the offers after which my offer expires.  (Clearly, not making friends that way)

I always look up the address of the property on HCAD.org (Harris county) or similar sites for nearby counties.  

I love hopping into the listings and reading the shameless puffing that real estate agents do so well. Most recently I saw this (for a six year old storage property) "Below Market Rents & Occupancy!" I wanted to direct the agent to his nearest economics professor so he could be introduced to the reality that the rest of us live in. Anyway, the purpose of this post was to see if we lobby BP to add section to highlight some of the foolish agents out there. BP may be too classy for that sort of thing though. :-)

People often use cash flow because you can put that in the bank. Your appreciation is zero benefit to you until you start to monetize it (via a sale or higher rents, eg cash flow). Appreciation is somewhat more speculative.

Only tweak I might make is to have all investors sign a subscription agreement requiring them to make their contribution within two days of receiving a written notice. Be sure that the subscription agreement requires that the funds be "immediately available" so that you can immediately deploy the funds with no holds on the funds at your bank. I would do this because I would only partner with folks I felt 100% comfortable would honor their commitments. If you have any doubt of their integrity or ability to pay... You should get the cash upfront prior to making cash offers as you have outlined.

I think that Stephen Hamilton II hit the ball out of the park on this one. Unless you just have a TON of unrelated personal assets, I would just insure heavily and knock a few of these out until you start complicating matters.

Just sell the asset and have the proceeds go to the SDIRA.

I see both risk and opportunity. For a prudent owner there are clear benefits, but If an owner gets a little over-zealous and begins monitoring the activities of their tenants it may not take long until you get labeled "big brother" and that stigma (earned or not) would be difficult to prepare. (Note: Even in the thread above I see activities that I would suggest are on the wrong side of line.)

As an iPhone user whose fingers are largely incompatible with the iPhone, I wondered about how BP's voyage into mobile would go... Would the content be butchered to the lowest common denominator as we regularly see on Facebook and Twitter or would the site still largely be written in plain English with punctuation and everything (or at least our best efforts). I don't know what the rest of you think, but I have to say I am pleased to see well-written posts as well as a very intuitive, well-designed mobile app. Seems like the step into mobile was pretty clean from my vantage point... Well done BP!